ByronM - Frogdog, Mole Preacher, and Stone Building

 

Today I have a group of three submissions that are all vastly different.  Let's start out with my favourite and the oddest, most NSFW one, which of course means a Kingdom Death model.  This is one I have waited a while to get to and paint, the mighty Frogdog and her multitude of dogpoles. This is a huge model, being on a 100mm round base and towering a little over that in height.

This is one of the newer KD models and as is normal in KD, she is anything but normal.  This is a cross between what looks like a simian face and a frog/toad body.  To help add to the strangeness of the model, she has human breasts hanging underneath and 6 human faces on her back, each with a vagina for a mouth and is giving birth to more "dogpoles".  Only in the strange and inhuman world of Kingdom Death could this creature be a thing! 

In game, the monster likes hopping around the swamp from lily-pad to lily pad that it treats as trampolines, sending people flying through the air.  She also charges up her double sphincter before releasing the most noxious of farts (she even has a fart AI deck with various toxic odours ready to release) that cause you to pass out and potentially drown in the swamp.  All in all it sounds like a cool and different fight, which is what KD is all about (although definitely not for everyone!).

Next up I have a small addition for my Burrows & Badgers collection, a small mole preacher.  I call him Friar Tuck, since he reminds me of the outfit in the Disney Robin Hood animated movie, just not big enough or fat enough, but its all they have that is close in the line.  As with all my B&B stuff it is a pretty simple cartoony paint job, but looks good with all the other miniatures.

Lastly, I have a 3D printed stone house from the Greendale line that can be found on myminifactory (there is also an equivalent line called Grimdale that is the destroyed versions of each building).  I printed this on my Anycubic Kobra S1 that I got a few months back, and it did a great job for a filament printer.  

However it did really remind me why I HATE filament prints. The lines and textures are a pain in the ass to work with, and I would really rather have printed in in resin.  The only reason I didn't is that I have about 10 buildings to paint up in this line, and another 10 for the ruined versions, and filament costs about $5 a building to print while resin would be $30-$50 per building.  To be fair, once on the table and at arms reach you can not really see the lines, so while I hate dealing with them, its not really noticeable when you are playing a game with them. 

The building is 5.5" long, 3.5" wide, and 5" tall, making it fairly substantial.  I painted it a stone grey colour to start with, then went in with 5 different shades of tan and brown and started painting random stones different colours.  From there it was washed to mute the colours a bit and then onto the roof and all the details.  Honestly, it too WAY too long to paint and was not worth it in the challenge due to the huge time sink it was as I had to be careful to always wet-brush and not dry-brush for the print lines to show up.  It probably took me twice as long as the frogdog to paint!  I am still thinking of adding some flock and moss to the roof, but decided to leave it for now until all are painted and I decide if I am going to do snow or moss.

And providing a group shot with a standard space marine for scale.

 

Overall these models should give me a grand total of  45 points.  The Frogdog is equivalent to the King I posted earlier in the challenge and should count as a 40mm monster for 25 points.  The mole preacher is a 25mm model for 5 points. Lastly the building is equivalent to many others that I have awarded 15 points to, so am claiming the same for myself here. As always though, points don't really matter to me, I am happy to just be getting stuff done, so adjust as you see fit.

 

ByronM - AOS Ogor Mawtribe Gluttons

 

Over the last few years a friend of mine has been de-cluttering since he moved way out in the middle of nowhere and that has been an amazing windfall for my pile of shame.  I think I just finished getting the last of his vast collection this fall, and it spanned over 30 tote boxes of stuff!  Most of it GW stuff!  He only gets to play games when visiting me, so it's now all here to be worked on and played with. Oh, and it has caused lots of in house fighting as my sons Riley and Quinn try to claim various parts of the collection for their own.

Anyway, part of that collect was a huge pile of Warhammer Fantasy era Ogres, or Ogors as they now call them so that the GW legal department can ensure that the IP they stole from past companies and authors can now not be re-stolen from them. Man do I hate modern day GW...

 Both of my sons have been bugging me to play Age of Sigmar with them, and while I consider the rules complete SH*T it is a chance to play games with them, sooooo....  I went looking for bits to make as small an army as possible so that I don't have to paint a whole ton of stuff for a game I don't really care about, and I decided on the Ogres, er I mean: Ogors.  The whole 2000 point army will consist of just 24 models, so that's a bonus!

This week I focused on getting the first of two units in the army together (yeah, really just two units and then a bunch on monsters and characters.... what a dumb game), a reinforced unit of 12 Ogor Mawtribe Gluttons.  Most of these were already assembled and primed, some even had some colour on them here and there (that I just painted over!) so while there are some mould lines still on them, I was not about to go and clean them up and re-prime them so they got left as they were.  Do you start to understand my level of caring for this project? :-D. 

These models have been painted to simply be done and table ready, they are nothing special, and are pretty rough.  I think they look good enough to be on a table at a store event though, so stopped at that.  I will probably put more effort into the characters and monsters, but the base infantry can suck it! 

I tried to have several different shades of flesh on them so that they do not all look the same, I also did them with various different colours of pants and boots since I really doubt the Ogors have an army tailor and uniform standard.  

For basing I am going for a dry fall / early winter Steppe look with scrub and sand base, and then patches of snow.  However, despite having at least 3 different types of snow flock, I can not find ANY of them (we moved 2 years ago and I do not believe I have used them since and they are probably still buried in my storage trailer someplace) so I had to drop the snow part of the base until I can either find my snow flock or much more likely order in some more.  I will make sure I post an updated picture when I do get the bases fully done with other Ogors in the near future.

ByronM - Kingdom Death: The King in Yellow

 

It was a busy Christmas so I didn't get much painting done, but I did manage to get some base colours on a bunch of models and at least this one model done, so I am posting it alone this week.  It is a figure that has caused much consternation with the wife, as she despises the colours I am using.  However, how could I not do an evil demonic king in any colour other than yellow?  So, I present to you my version of the Kingdom Death (KD) king as the King in Yellow.

I wanted to do him yellow since I first got him a few years ago, but delayed and delayed as painting anything in yellow sucks!  It's such a hard colour to work with, and its so easy to get it wrong (which unfortunately I probably did as I am not super happy with it but nothing I did made it better so I just left it). Over all though, despite the yellow being a bit muddier than I wanted, since I was looking for more of a shade of ochre through yellow, I think it suits the model.  It makes the fleshy bits a little harder to see and they blend in a bit, but overall I am not un-pleased with the result, just not thrilled with it either, if that makes any sense.

This is a huge model at almost 6" tall as shown with the already fairly tall KD survivor next to it!

 

As with all KD models he is full or strange, dark, twisted details.  For KD that usually means tentacles, penises, extra body parts (normally arms and hands), and babies and the King does not disappoint. While there are no tentacles or penises, the whole King appears to be made up of human arms and hands and babies.  No idea why, and really not sure I even want to question or know.  All I know is that it is creepy and disturbing to many people, but I love it! Heck, he even has a flowing chain of babies around his neck and back.  I normally don't paint pupils on models as it always looks like they are shocked with wide eyes, but I felt in this case that look would work on the babies, as it gives them a confused "why the F am I here" look to them, so I went with it.

 

ByronM - Burrows & Badgers - Stoats (Weasels)

For my first entry of this years challenge I painted up three more models for my Burrows & Badgers collection of figures.  These are three Stoats to add as mercenaries to any force I would like, and I affectionately refer to them as Larry, Darryl and Darrel.

 

 

I try to get something painted on day-one of each challenge every year, and usually succeed.  I see that Quinn (my son) beat me to the punch this year by getting up super early before work to paint something.  I had to be a bit slower this year as these are the first models I have painted since June when I suffered a pretty bad concussion and have not really been able to focus much since then. It's been slowly getting better recently, but it still took pretty much all day in small breaks going back and forth to them to get them done, and some of the brush work is a little rough, but hey at least they are done and table ready! 

 

 

These are official figures from Oathsworn Miniatures for their awesome game called Burrows & Badgers which I raved about last year.  Since they they have released a second edition and the game has gotten even better!  For anyone who has not tried this game yet, I can not recommend it enough.  Sure, it borrows pretty much all it's rules from other rule sets and there is little "original" about the game, but it just works!  This is the game I describe to everyone as "being better than it has any right to be".  It borrows the best parts of Mordheim, Infinity, LoTR, and so many more games, it really is brilliant, and the figures are top notch as well! 

As with the figures I painted last year, I am trying to go for a low detail, high contrast, cartoon type look with them.  I am not trying to do too much detail work on them, I just want them to stand out and look good at table top distance.  That said I am pretty happy with how these turned out, especially since I have not touched a brush in 6 months. 

 

ByronM - Warhammer 40k Armigers and Trench Crusade

 Today I have a fully 3d printed submission for your enjoyment, all happening in Grim Dark Universes.  

First up we have my first group of Warhammer 40k Armigers, in for form of a cadre of 3 Armiger Helverins. I have wanted to do a new Warhammer army for a long time, specifically an Imperial Knight army as they have such a low model count, however the models are all the typical insane GW pricing.  However, I recently found some great 3d files for Armigers, so I could print my own rather than dealing the GW.  So, Away we go!!!  Expect more to follow.

I could not decide on a colour scheme for these, but found some colours a while ago from Scale75 that I fell in love with the shades and bought them with no real idea what I would ever use them for.  I randomly saw them when trying to figure out colours for these and decided now is the time, so from darkest to lightest I used Scale75 Anthracite Gray, Abyssal Blue, Caspian Blue (the main colour showing) and Bearing Blue.  All were airbrushed on after painting the chassis and seran(cling) wrapping the chassis to protect the paint job while allowing me to airbrush the carapace.

Once painted, I really wasn't sure what to do to base them, and then again stumbled across a set of wrecked concrete foundation pillars from Epic Basing and thought they would look good on the bases so printed up a bunch of them and away I went.  I think they add a bunch to the base and are something different.

Next up is the first part of a new project from a new game, Trench Crusade.  The art and lore of the game is brilliant and very Grim Dark (go figure since a lot of the crew is made up of ex-GW employees), but I am not really sure about the rules, seems a bit too simplistic.  However, a bunch of friends want to play, and since I subject them to random weirdness that may not be their cup-o-tea but they humour me, I figured I should humour them as well.  If anyone wants to checkout the rules, they are available here for free: Trench Crusade.

This post has the first 2 models that I 3D printed and started painting, only to find out that I am not likely to actually use them in my list, but oh well, they look cool!  I selected the Iron Sultanate as I felt like doing some Persian models and these are all based on Persian lore with the Jannisaries coming in a later entry.  These two though are the Assassin and the Bronze Bull.

The Bronze Bull is absolutely massive being based on a 50mm round and standing over 100mm tall and 150mm wide.  Being such a big chunky boy I am counting the Bronze Bull as my Gluttony model because at this size I am sure he eats a literal ton!

Since the world of Trench Crusade is an extremely grim dark war torn setting, I wanted to keep with a very dark look as well.  So the whole force is going to be painted in mainly bronzes and reds that are muted / muddied down for lower contrasts.

Here is an image to show just how big all of these models are, as the marine is a standard 40k marine on a 25mm base, the bull on a 50mm and the Armiger on a 100mm base.

ByronM - Burrows & Badgers

 Today's second entry is one that I have been looking forward to for a while.  I happened across this game last year and picked up a bunch of the figures as the game looked like fun and the miniatures even more so!  I mean, which of us didn't grow up reading Wind in the Willows, watching Disney's Robin Hood, or watching way too many Saturday morning cartoons with anthropomorphic animals in them?  Seeing these bits of memory from childhood turned into a wargame fills me with memories and was way too much fun to pass up.

I wanted to paint them up as soon as I got them, but set them aside for the challenge and for new glasses so that I could attempt to do justice to them.  Having got my new glasses mid-December, and having booked holidays from late December through mid January, the time was right to spend way too much time painting these lovely little miniatures, so without further ado here is the first batch of my Burrows & Badgers collection.

This is the first of the base warband sets, which includes Shrew-zerker, a mouse nun, a squirrel archer, a rabbit archer, a barn swallow scout, and an otter pirate as the leader.  Quite an interesting mix of characters which will form the core of my rogue force.

I painted all of these miniatures as one offs, meaning by them selves and not in bulk with others.  This allowed me to focus on each one and give it its own character and look.  As an added bonus because I had such an interest in these figures I spend a bunch of time on each one (thanks to having the last few weeks off since the challenge started) and as a result I am actually really happy with them all, which for me is not very common as I am often my harshest critic.  I am super thrilled with the look of all of these figures and am only disappointed that I can not get around to the terrain that I printed up to go with them while the challenge is on, due to Curt dropping terrain from the challenge this year :-(  Oh well, I will get it done once the challenge is over.

This is the second of the base warband sets which includes 2 mouse (mice?) knights, a squirrel caster, a serpent caster, a weasel archer, and a rabbit knight.  These will form the core of my Royalist faction.

To not bore anyone with pictures of each figure separately, here are just a few of the ones that I really like how they came out.  First is the squirrel witch, and I think her red brown colouration really looks good against her green forest cloak.

Next up is the ferret crossbowman, which reminds me of the archers in the Disney Robin Hood cartoon. I know they were not ferrets in there, I think they were wolves or something, but it still makes me think of the show and I think he would fit right in there.

Technically, this one is supposed to be a sparrow, but while looking up picture of birds to go from for colours I saw a picture of a barn swallow and liked the blue and tan colouration so decided to go with that instead.  In person the blue really pops and makes the model stand out.

I still have about a dozen more models to paint up for this game, but will probably do them piece meal over the challenge, but I promise to put them all together for one big group shot at the end.  At some point I will need to go back and add some more basing elements to the rouge faction models as I 3d printed the ferns and plants for the loyalist models a while back and have since misplaced the files for them, so could not print up more.  That will be rectified shortly.

Overall there are 12 models here, but the shrew-zerker was submitted earlier in another post so only 11 count towards my points here, so 55 points (unless some of the bigger ones class as a different scale as they are quite big on 40mm bases).

ByronM - Germans & Jellyfish??

 For my 1st post of the day I submit for your amazement and wonder Germans & Jellyfish.  I know, they make a very strange combination post, but that is part of the fun with the challenge coming up with some strange bedfellows.

The Jellyfish warriors are part of a project that has sat in limbo for years, a Wrath of Kings force or sea warriors.  These Jellyfish come from an undersea kingdom that has all sorts of sea creatures anthropomorphized into humanoid type warriors.  If I get around to them later in the challenge you may see shark, fish, whale, and crab people from this faction, but no promises as they are pretty far down the queue.  I had to get these warriors done though as I did the unit leader a few years ago for a theme entry and he has sat without his squad in my case since then.

These were a lot of fun to paint, as they are a very different colour and shape than most models.  However it showed me very quickly how my painting has dropped off after 2 years of not painting much, as try as I might I could not get them to the same painting quality of the captain that I painted a few years ago.  They are still ok, but not the same.

Next up are 20 more germans from my old second edition Bolt Action set, which I must have bought an extra box of since looking at the core box set it said it only came with 10 and a half-track, but I still have 10 more after this to paint up, so not sure how or why I ended up with 40, but it's all good.

These were done quick and fast to just get them on the table after all these years hiding in a box, so nothing fancy.  10 more to go and then I will need to find some civilian models to make up the Van Trapp family so they can hunt them down across the fields :-)

ByronM - Maggotkin of Nurgle: Daemons, Warcry Warband

 For this entry I am submitting my pestilent Maggotkin of Nurgle: Daemons warband for the Games Workshop game of Warcry.  Warcry is never a game I really wanted to get into as it is really simplistic and doesn't have much tactical depth, however...  I ended up jumping in on it for two reasons.

First, both of my sons started playing it recently and kept bugging me to play it with them.  Since they have never before really shown interest in many miniature games, despite years of trying to get them to play, I figured I kind of had to jump in with them.  Secondly, I have lusted after the Nurgle Plague Drone models since they came out years ago, thinking they looked too cool and would be a challenge to paint.  

So with those two reasons I jumped all in and got some Plague Drones, and dug up a box of Plague Bearers from my endless pile of GW shame and got to work on my warband.   With my slightly evil and warped sense of humour, I affectionately refer to my warband as "The Vaccinated" as they have lovingly accepted every injection of filth that Grandfather Nurgle has offered.

These models were a lot of fun to paint, but a pain in the @$$ to photograph, and the pictures still didn't turn out well after almost a whole afternoon of trying to get good ones.  The issue is that they are missing so much of the glazes that show up in person.  They have multiple glazes of greens, oranges, blues, and purples in different shades that show up as rotted/bruised flesh, but no matter how many pictures in different lights I take, they just do not show up well.  So the images you see are all you get, as I gave up in frustration.  

The painting method was pretty simple, I primed brown, then zenithal highlighted bleached bone.  From there it was a matter of various Vallejo Xpress colours layering over the primer to build up greens and then reds around wounds, then blues, purples, oranges around the sours and various skin areas.  Once all that was done and dry I used dead flesh to highlight all the edges and the pustules.  It was a fairly easy process that looks great (to me at least) in person, but shit in these pictures, sorry guys.

For the weapons I used silver then build up layers of browns, reds and oranges for a super rusty and old look.  The banner was done as bronze and then a layer of verdigris was added to give it that old weathered look.  I might have to go add some more, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

The Plague drones were something I have wanted to do forever, hence the Lust points for them, but was never sure I could pull them off, and unfortunately I don't know if I really have.  They are certainly filthy and disgusting, but I am not sure I got the wings or carapace right, but not sure what else to do with either item, so am open to ideas from you guys.

Overall though, while there are parts of these models that I know others could do better, I am actually happy with them (which is very uncommon for me) and proud to show them off, although I wish they showed up here as they do in real life.  But I still think they look good and feel the plain grey base helps make the figures themselves pop a bit more, and the brightly coloured flowers help add a bit of an alien feel to them.

Lastly, if anyone out there wants to try Warcry, in a very NON-GW move, GW has all the rules and faction lists up online for free here: Warcrier.net.  Overall it's not a bad game, and I get the appeal of a lot of the rules and how it plays, it's just not my cup of tea, but for a chance to play with my boys, I had to paint up a force for it.

ByronM -WW2 German Infantry Squad + Shrewzerker

 Now that the Christmas Craziness and Family BS is over with, it's time to get down to what really matters, Wargames, Miniatures, and Painting!!!

First up today is a unit that I first primed up probably 3 or 4 years ago for a challenge and they have sat primed black hiding in shame in the back of the closet since then.  They are the germans that came with the second edition of Bolt action, that I have always meant to get around to, but never have.  There are more coming as I think there were 30ish in the box, so expect another few units over the coming days/weeks.  Since these have sat primed and waiting for so long I am counting them towards the First Circle of hell, Limbo for a bonus 20 points.

They are painted mainly in German field grey, with grey pants and an almost black helmet.  They are a pretty basic paint job, but it works at a distance.  I also decided to base them with small yellow flowers as seen in the Sound of Music, so that at some point I can maybe put on a game where the Germans chase down the incepted and ear piercingly annoying Van Trapp family and silence them once and for all.  They will of course keep Julie Andrews alive, but the rest of the family must be silenced!

Next up is my first test model for a project I am really looking forward to this year, Burrows & Badgers.  I love anthropomorphic animals so when I saw this game for the first time a few years back I needed to get it, but then got sidetracked on other projects so never got around to it.  This year that changes!  I have about 20 models for this game to get painted and have several more in progress on the paint table already.

Points wise this should be 75 points (11 28mm figures x 5 = 55 points, + 20 bonus points for Limbo)